Online Creative Writing Course – On going, start when it suits you and work at your own pace.

Online Business Writing – On going, start when it suits you

Creative Writing Course – Starts 28 September and continues for 10 weeks. Sessions held on Wednesdays from 7 to 9.30pm in Parkview, Johannesburg.

Junior Writers’ Course – 3 to 6 October, 9 to 12.30, Parkview, Johannesburg

Self Publishing Workshop – evening of 6 October, Parkview, Johannesburg

Growing Through Writing – 15 October, 9am to 5pm, Parkview, Johannesburg

Booker Prize evening at Love Books, Melville, Johannesburg

Publishing Workshop – 1 December, Parkview, Johannesburg

Power Of Writing – TBC Newtown, Johannesburg

Creative Writing Weekend, TBC, McGregor, Western Cape

Dynamic Language Skills – COMING SOON!

Please click on the links or email trishurquhart@gmail.com to book your place for further information.

Unlock your child’s imagination with an introduction to creative writing – a four-day holiday course in Johannesburg that gets to grips with the four pillars of narrative storytelling as well as plenty of fun and “get out of your chair” exercises.

Individual attention will ensure stimulation combined with theory, craft combined with creativity.

The course has been designed for kids in Grade 8 and upwards.

Course date: 4 – 7 July 2011
Time: 09h00 to 12h30 each day.
Course fees: R1 500.
Venue: Parkview, Johannesburg.
Course facilitators: Helen Webster and Mandy Collins.

If you’re looking for creative ways to occupy your child/ren during the upcoming holidays, contact Trish on 0826524643 or via email trishurquhart@gmail.com
Helen Webster is a qualified English teacher who believes that the stimulation of imagination and the support of independent thinking are critical to a student’s success in life. She has written two screen plays and is busy with her first novel.
Mandy Collins is something of a one-stop writing shop, and has been writing professionally for two decades. She is passionate about teaching both the art and craft of writing and loves to nurture creativity in children.
150 word short story writing challenge

 
To settle a bar bet, Hemingway wrote the following short story. For Sale: Baby shoes. Never worn. He called it his best work. And it proves that you don’t have to blather on endlessly to write something powerful.
It is the inspiration for our June exercise. But we’ve decided to go easy on you. We’re happy to settle for not six, but 150 words.
Here’s the challenge.

Write a 150 word short story that contains the following words: car guard; lover; and shoe.
Best story stands in line to win its author a R200 book voucher from the independent bookshop of your choice.  Your deadline is July 7, at 12 noon.

Allaboutwriting’s Live Forum Discussion for course participants  – past and present

If you have done one of our courses you are welcome to join us on our new Allaboutwriting Forum. We’re just getting the Forum off the ground – but already there have been a good few interesting nibbles.
Don’t forget that every Wednesday between 17:00 and 18:00, Jo-Anne and Richard are “live” to answer questions, respond to suggestions and otherwise interact with you on our Forum site. For log-in details, contact Trish.
When we’re not live, the Forum’s there for people who’ve done one of our courses to communicate with each other, to share their writing, ask for reactions, try out new ideas, and generally procrastinate when they should be hard at work on that novel.
Writing can be a lonely business. The Forum’s intended to help writers break out of their isolation.
Meet the Publishers at the Rand Club

 
About 40 of us met some of the country’s most prestigious publishers on June 24. The event, chaired by Dave Chislet (who’d run a workshop on publishing for writers through the afternoon), was provocative, inspiring and, it must be admitted, a little sobering.
Alison Lowry from Penguin, Wesley Thompson from Pan Macmillan, and Zann Hoad from Sharp Sharp Media,  spoke about their expectations and experiences of local unsolicited submissions.

Watch this space for upcoming publishing events!
Reminders

 
Our course in McGregor, Western Cape on July 22-24 is filling up – so if you’re intrigued by the prospect of a stimulating weekend course, in memorable Klein Karoo surroundings, within striking distance of a dozen distinguished wine cellars, contact Trish soon on her email address.
Our latest featured independent bookstore is Watkins Books in London.  And please send us a write up of your favorite bookshop and we will post it to spread the word.

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very;” your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.  ~ Mark Twain

Ernest Hemingway insisted that there is no secret to writing. “There is nothing to writing,” he wrote. “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Google the question – What is the secret to good writing? – and you’ll get a million answers. They range from the practical, like Steven Goldsberry, who says “Never save your best for last: start with your best” to the profound, like Hemingway’s.

Much of the advice dished up by the experts is good. Read it and take note. It’ll help to make your writing more accomplished, more publishable.

But if there is just one secret, then we think that Hemingway wasn’t far off. It’s quite simple. If you want to improve your writing, then write. And write. And write. Write down your thoughts. Write down your observations. Whip characters out of the whimsy of the moment. Write the first page of a great novel. Write the last page of an even greater novel. Toy with plots. Experiment with dialogue. Write letters to yourself: the self of the present moment, the self that you once were, the self that you might one day become.

Play games with language. Invent new words. Learn old words.

Write.

And write.

And write.

And we guarantee that you’ll grow as a writer.

Growing Through Writing

Is the new course run by our psychologist associates Pierre Brouard and Judith Ancer under the Allaboutwriting banner.
You’re invited to join a select group of “growers” on May 28 in Johannesburg to learn more about yourselves through a range of writing techniques like journalling, dream diaries, poetry, and letters to your childhood selves…

Writing is always a liberating experience. Growing Through Writing directs the arrow of your creative attention at the target of your selves.

Should be fun. Should be illuminating!

The course costs just R1 200 for the day, which includes a delicious lunch and more tea than you can manage.

Publishing Workshop

What does it take to get your book published? What are South African publishers looking for? To get answers to these questions, and to introduce you to some of South Africa’s leading publishers, Allaboutwriting is running a two-pronged event on June 24 at the Rand Club in Johannesburg.

It kicks off with an afternoon workshop run by an experienced workshop facilitator and speaker. Dave Chislett is the author of several books and numerous short-stories. He comes with a focused understanding of the business of writing – including publishing.

After the conclusion of the workshop, you are invited to stay on at the Rand Club to meet a number of South Africa’s leading publishers – including Pan Macmillan and Penguin – each of whom will give a short talk on the sort of MSS they’re actively interested in.

You can come to the afternoon workshop, and/or the evening snack-and-wine meet-the-publisher session. We’re anticipating that this will be a popular event, so book soon to ensure your place. The afternoon workshop costs R 500, which entitles you to a free pass to the evening session. If you’re only interested in meeting the publishers, then we’re charging a nominal fee to cover the costs of sherry and sandwiches.

Love to see you there!

McGregor Course

On July 22, 23 and 24, Allaboutwriting will be holding one of our most dynamic courses in the not-so-sleepy village of McGregor in the Western Cape. Over the two and a half days, we’ll be honing our understanding and mastery of that most essential key to compelling drama: conflict. Spiced with plenty of practical writing exercises, the Keys Course runs participants through the ways in which conflict underpins drama, pits characters against one another, generates tension and intrigue…

We’re holding the course at Temenos, one of the great country retreats of the region, with a reputation not only for fine food, but for its lush gardens and air of contained serenity. (Nice contrast with our subject matter!) Check it out here.

We meet for introductions and an initial writing exercise late on Friday afternoon, before settling in and having supper at Temenos’s Tebaldi Restaurant. Our final session ends at 14:30 on Sunday

The entire weekend, including food and accommodation, and, naturally, the course, is R3 500.00 per person. There’s a discount for those sharing a room.

Every novel a winner!

Here is a great blog interview with past student Lisa Anne Julien whose book More Than Friends was recently published and is available at CNA and Leisure Books.

Another of our students has just published a novel, Dancing in the Shadows of Love (Release Date May 2011, Aztar Press). Well done, Judy Croome. It was also very gratifying for us to learn that a short story she wrote while doing our course, The Place of the Doves, was short-listed in the African Writing 2011 Flash Fiction competition.

Past tense

Not tense so much as wonderfully invigorating. In the last few weeks, Allaboutwriting teams have…

Run a hugely successful one-day Power of Writing course at the Workers Museum in Newtown…

Held two Junior Writers’ courses for kids, a kind of shock-and-awe introduction to the challenges and pleasures of writing truly creatively. Much applause for the generous grant from etv which made possible the enthusiastic participation of five children from Vulamazivuko School in Soweto!

Held a weekend Keys Course in association with Creative Escapes in Fouriesburg in the Eastern Free State…

Long live Indie Bookstores!

Allaboutwriting has a new project which is to promote as many of the great independent bookstores, both in South Africa and further afield as we can because we believe they add great value to the reading – and ultimately, the writing – experience.

We’re carrying profiles of indie bookstores up and down the country – check out the first profiles we’ve gathered on our website – and would dearly love to add substantially to this initial list.

Book Lounge, Cape Town
Love Books, Johannesburg
Fogarty’s Bookshop, Port Elizabeth
Clarke’s Bookshop, Cape Town
Select Books, Cape Town

So if you have a favourite bookstore, send us their details – name, web address, email address – and give us a couple of reasons you so enjoy the service, and the books, they supply.

As the power of the digital reader grows, so the very real, personalized service that bookstores provides will become more and more important in maintaining an altogether human dimension in the exchange between reader and writer.

Up the indies!

Not quite what he had in mind…

“Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I’m finishing, even if it’s turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don’t admit it, they’re not being honest. You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire – that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it’s just this book. And it has its strengths, it has its virtues, but there’s nothing about the Crimean war, there’s nothing about interstellar travel. It says what it says and that’s it. And it joins all the other books in the world.” Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, quoted in The Guardian

For more information on any of the courses mentioned iabove, call Trish on 082 6524643, e-mail her on trishurquhart@gmail.com or go to our website at www.allaboutwritingcourses.com

First up are the dates of the courses we’ve scheduled for the first couple of months of the year. We’ll bring you more details of additional courses as the world turns.

Creative Writing – Wednesday, January 26

Our flagship 10-week Creative Writing programme begins on Wednesday, January 26 with Jo-Anne Richards and Richard Beynon (that’s me). This covers the whole gamut of writing skills, and serves as well as an inspirational kick in the pants for writers who’ve deferred that all-important project just once too often. Course participants meet in Parkview from 07:00 pm to 09:30 pm. The course, according to past participants, is, depending on who you speak to, “life-changing,” “practical and always constructive” and “positive and invigorating”.

Character Course

Our one-day The Character Course, facilitated by psychologist Pierre Brouard and Richard Beynon takes place on February 5. It blends psychology and writing to create a one-day plunge into the process of creating characters.

Growing through writing

Then our spanking new Growing through writing one-day course, designed and facilitated by psychologists Pierre Brouard and Judith Ancer, hits the street running on 19 February. Pierre and Judith assure us that, while it’s not a psychotherapy workshop per se, they’ll work with what you bring to move towards greater personal discovery and wellness. Should be fun (not to say, life-enhancing!)

Winner of the Bookex Creative Writing Special Draw (assuring her a free place on the ten-week Creative Writing Course) is Bulewa Mtati. Congratulations! – and we look forward to seeing you on Wednesday 26.

Please note, that we run courses with a minimum of six participants – and a maximum of 12. This gives us the chance for more intensive work with individual writers – but also guarantees that each course has that “critical mass” you need to promote useful and productive interaction.

Allaboutwriting/cont.

Anyone who’s been on any of our courses qualifies to join us at our monthly writers’ fest, where we do an imaginative writing exercise, and share our recent writing for comment by our peers. It’s fun, there’s wine to drink, and it can be the joggle every writer needs from time to time. Here are the dates for the next few months:

Monday, January 24

Monday February 28

Monday, March 28

Monday, May 30

Monday,June 27

If you’re interested in attending these – or any other course described in this newsletter, email Trish at trishurquhart@gmail.com or you can call her on 082 652 4643. More details of our courses are, of course, available on the website

Tip of the month: the devil’s in the detail

Here’s something we came across written by the always fascinating James Wood (you should see his reviews from time to time in the New Yorker!):

“Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us toward it, whereas literature teaches us to note – to notice the way my mother, say, often wipes her lips just before kissing me; the drilling sound of a London cab when its diesel engine is flabbily idling; the way old leather jackets have white lines in them like the striations of fat in pieces of meat; the way fresh snow ‘creaks’ underfoot; the way a baby’s arms are so fat that they seem tied with string…”

Win a book voucher while you sharpen your writing skills

And finally here’s our monthly exercise, with a prize of a book voucher worth a couple of hundred bucks, from Boekhuis in Jo’burg, or the Book Lounge in Cape Town. We’ve taken this from the endlessly intriguing John Gardener’s book The Art of Fiction:
Write honest and sensitive descriptions (or sketches) of (a) one of your parents, (b) a mythological beast, and (c) a ghost.

Limit yourself to two hundred words per description. Remember: concentrate on the specific details that’ll make each character spring to life (even the ghost!) Send in your entry to trishurquhart@gmail.com by midnight on 31 January.

Good luck. We’ll announce the winner in our February newsletter.

CREATIVE WRITING COURSE
Start date: 26 January 2011
Duration: 10 Wednesdays 7 – 9.30pm
Cost: R5500

THE CHARACTER COURSE
When: 5 February 2011
Time: 9.00am to 5.00pm
Cost: R1500

GROWING THROUGH WRITING
Pierre Brouard and Judith Ancer
When: 19 February 2011
Time: 9.30am to 3.30pm
Cost: R1200

FIND THE PHOTO AND STORY
With photographer David Moore from Creative Escapes and journalist and travel writer Fred de Vries
When: Sunday 6 March and 3 April
Cost: R1500

THE POWER OF WRITING
When: 12 March 2011
Time: 9 am to 4.30pm
Cost: R450

CREATIVE ESCAPES WEEKEND
When: 25, 26, 27 March 2011
Venue: Fouriesburg, Free State
Cost: R2500 includes accommodation, meals and tuition

KEYS TO CREATIVE WRITING
When: 9 and 10 April
Time: 9.00am to 5.00pm
Venue: McGregor, Western Province

BUSINESS WRITING
Online
When: Start today or any time that suits you and work at your own pace and in your own time.
Cost: R2750 for eight modules
Face-to-face
Courses available by arrangement for groups on Monday or Tuesday mornings

CONTACT INFORMATION
Allaboutwriting – Trish Urquhart trishurquhart@gmail.com 0826524643
Creative Escapes – www.creative-escapes.co.za

We can give you the essential skills to creative writing over the course of a one-day programme that’ll knock your socks off.

And this is your last chance to enrol!

What’s the course? We call it The Power of Writing because that’s precisely what it’ll give you access to. It’s good for anyone with an interest in creative writing and who’d like to explore that aspect of themselves more thoroughly. We’ve wrapped a little theory around a lot of practical writing exercises designed to give you the tools to develop your own, unique writing voice.

It’s happening this Saturday, September 11, at The Workers Museum, in Newtown, Johannesburg. And it’ll cost you just R450.

For more information or to enrol email trishurquhart@gmail.com or call Trish at 082 652 4643

Well done to Craig Watt-Pringle who won the draw for our new two day Creative Writing Course the first of which will be held on 28 and 29 August at Foxwood House in Houghton, Johannesburg. This two day creative writing course is designed to be provocative and fun. Jo-Anne and Richard will lead participants through a series of writing exercises designed to expand creativity and illuminate the secrets to great writing. The course will inspire fiction and non-fiction writers, anyone who is interested in trying their hand at writing, as well as active readers who are interested in expanding their reading pleasure. The cost is R2500.

Course News
We have three courses starting in the next couple of weeks. Our next Creative Writing Course starts tomorrow, Wednesday 14 July in Parkview, Johannesburg. The sessions will be held every Wednesday for 10 weeks from 7 – 9.30pm. Cost R5500.

Character Course – Join Richard Beynon and psychologist Pierre Brouard on Saturday 17 July to learn what makes great characters tick. This course will help screen-writers, novelists and television writers create characters that leap to life from page or screen. The workshop will be held in Parkview, Johannesburg from 9am to 5pm with lunch and refreshments included. Cost R1500

Biography and Memoir Course – Run by Jo-Anne Richards and Fred de Vries this three day course will teach you to write about real lives, both to preserve the past and to make sense of the present. 24 and 25 July and 21 August. Cost R4800.

Anyone who has done one of our courses will receive a 10% discount on any subsequent courses.

Writing Exercise
Here’s a writing trigger that we stumbled upon on the internet. Suggested by writer Yvette Amarlyse, it’s a prompt designed to catapult you out beyond the fences that, unknowingly, you’ve erected around you. She says: “Pick one ordinary everyday object. It can be anything. Next, imagine a world in which that object is unknown. Create a character that stumbles onto this object and see where your story takes you.”

Try this yourself, send it in to us at trishurquhart@gmail.com by 6pm on Friday 16 July and you might win a R200 gift voucher from Boekehuis bookshop.

Quote of the month
“Writers have to get used to launching something beautiful and watching it crash and burn. They also have to learn when to let go of control, when the work takes off on its own and flies, farther than they ever planned or imagined, to places they didn’t know they knew. All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.” – Ursula Le Guin

The face-to-face course is run by scriptwriter Richard Beynon and novelist Jo-Anne Richards. Participants meet once a week in Parkview, Johannesburg, for ten sessions.

The course is designed to help participants explore their creativity – and equip them with a range of essential writing skills. It suits all working, and aspirant, writers – or even those with no specific project in mind, but who long to unlock their creative selves.

The course is equally suitable for those wanting to start a novel, a screenplay, or a work of creative non-fiction.

Learn to tell a story in the most dramatic way possible… to create characters that leap to life from the page or the screen… to write dialogue that positively crackles with life and energy…

Learn to choose the most appropriate point of view for your particular story… to structure scenes that advance the story and expand our understanding of your characters… to structure your story vividly enough to avoid the pitfalls of a sagging middle – and keep readers glued to the last, climactic page.

Even if your immediate objective is not a novel or screenplay, the course will help unlock your creativity and enable the real you to emerge.

Join Jo-Anne Richards and Richard Beynon on Wednesday July 14, for the first of ten weekly sessions that will unleash your creative potential and, most important, get you writing.

For more information please go to www.allaboutwritingcourses.com – or phone Trish Urquhart now at 082 652 4643.

June Writing Exercise
This exercise was composed by Brian Kitely at the University of Denver:

Write about a person you love. This apparently simple instruction may be more difficult than you think. What makes us love people? How do we avoid being sentimental when describing the attributes that make someone loveable? You will immediately be faced with the decision of writing about someone you love or loved romantically or as a friend. Or perhaps you’ll choose a family member. Your greatest challenge will be to make your reader love this person, too. Write no more than 600 words in your allotted 30 minutes.

When you’re done, send it to us at trishurquhart@gmail.com. And here’s your deadline: 18h00 on Sunday 4 July.

Three additional writing exercises

Here are three mid-winter exercises we’ve whipped up to break that creative log-jam. They won’t take long, and there are no prizes (except pride and self-satisfaction) involved – but if you send them in to us we will post them on our website with (or without) your byline. Don’t take it too seriously – your reputation’s not on the line. Have fun. Pour yourself a cup of hot chocolate (or mulled wine) and begin:

Writing in scenes exercise
Two white collar workers, after an imprudent office party, wake up in bed together. One is delighted – one is distinctly less than thrilled, and possibly filled with guilt. In no more than 400 words, how might this scene play out? (And if you want to know much more about scenes, characters, conflict, action and dialogue, then join our Creative Writing Course starting on July 14 and running for ten weeks.)

Character exercise
In no more than 50 words, and without using a single adjective or adverb, describe a memorable character – real or imagined. Show him or her to use through action, detail and/or dialogue. (And remember, if you want to know almost everything there is to know about creating characters, join us at the Character Course on July 17.)

Biography and memoir exercise
Think of a scene that brings the mood of your childhood to life. Describe the scene as precisely as you can. We, the readers, want to get the feeling that we’re present and able to observe the action and eavesdrop on the dialogue as it happens. No more than 400 words, please. (If you want to bring to life your own story, that of your family, or someone you admire, then enroll for our Memoir, Biography and Family History Course starting on July 24.)

Quotation of the Month

“If I really considered myself a writer, I wouldn’t be writing screenplays. I’d be writing novels.” – Quentin Tarantino